It's all downhill from here.

Ohhhhhh, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy. I feel for you, my man. I mean, let's be honest. You came into an impossible job. Chairman changed hands two weeks after you arrived on the scene. You get to manage the club with the "best" fans in the world, and you only get to lose two games in a row until your head is called for.

Now - on the flipside - come on, Sam. Your first buy as Newcastle manager is none other than the infamous JOEY BARTON. He'd already been arrested and was about to go back to jail for gauging some guys eye out. But no - if there's ANY manager who can turn this player around, it's Big Sam. Well - apparently that didn't happen. My boy Barton is now in police custody for assault. Well done Joey. Hence, well done Sam. Oh, and if there's ANY manager who can get the lads together and inspire a team to greatness, it's Big Sam. I mean, he turned Bolton, a shite team, into Bolton, a half decent, depressing and frustrating team to play against. Well, he'll definitely be able to turn the massive egos of Newcastle United into a well oiled machine and turn this struggling team around. Or, actually - more accurately, maybe he'll manage to be the only team to lose to Derby, and only take a point from 6 possible against the worst side in the prem. And maybe he'll begin to actually blame the players for every loss instead of taking it on the chin like every other struggling manager. I mean - I hate the amount of guff that the Newcastle supporters give him on such a short fuse. But come on man - playing a 4-3-3 with our players after losing time after time after time - and then handing the armband over to ALAN SMITH, and not playing him at his desired striking position? The man has crazier decision making skills than Glenn Roeder. It just seems to get worse and worse. And now, there's such a disconnect between where the fans THINK Newcastle United sit in the halls of English football history and where they ACTUALLY belong, all the fans call for Sam's head and they want a Jose Mourinho or Arsene Wenger when in reality we deserve an Ian Downie or Steve Bruce (Nothing against these managers - they're great Championship managers - which is the quality of our side at the moment.) (On a side note - where did Chris Coleman go, Fulham fans?? The man's a quality manager and I don't know who he's managing these days.)

Anyway, I'm thinking, with the disaster that is Joey Barton, the apparently growing disconnect between Sam and his players, the increasingly tough schedule, and the previous failure to collect points from BOTTOM of the table sides, Sam might have just had that final straws placed on his already-sagging back. As much as I hate to say it/see it, I believe there's no other option for Sam to be on his way out.

But for now, let's just pray for poor little Joey Barton. I mean, the guy only makes 55,000 pounds a week. Of course, he NEEDS to get drunk and mug some poor guy in the street. I hope they forgive him like they have the last hundred times because he's an immortal footballer so he can come back and woefully underperform again like he's been doing so far this season! We miss you Joey!

It's beginning to look a lot like BOXING DAY!

Well, after a few consecutive poor poor performances against semi-decent teams, the proud, proud Magpies and the Toon Army all wanted rethink this whole Sam Allardyce thing. Then, after a couple consecutive results against bottom of the table sides (my apologies, beloved Fulham fans. God bless ya) it seems as though Sam is, once again, a brilliant genius-savior, and we'll be in the Champions League for sure next season.

Sorry Geordies, it just doesn't work like that - in either direction. Nevermind the fact that I'm resigned to watch high-school level footy being played every time I wish to cheer on my team, but after ANY result, no matter what it is, I'm going to have to hear some polarizing, over-inflated discussion about Sam and his boys. And its not only NUFC - almost a quarter of premiership teams have seen their managers handed the sack so far this season - and it's not even halfway through. Well, the good news is that (besides good ol' Newcastel United) some of the ACTUAL FOOTBALL we're seeing this season is absolutely fantastic. The drama is high, the attendance is high, the scoring is up, and for the most part, games are very, very entertaining. This past week saw the most dramatic of fixtures, plotting the big four against each other, and an estimated 600 MILLION people watched all over the world.
(Here's a little tip for us American viewers - http://www.skysports.com/ has a wonderful feature on Saturdays called Soccer Saturday, which EVEN WE can stream live on our pc's. It's from 9-11 every saturday morning and it basically consists of 6 guys in room watching all the matches and telling you everything that's happening, as it happens. Unfortunately, due to contractual regulations, they can't actually show any of the MATCHES - but it makes for a good two hours.)

So anyway, Newcastle have won two straight, with Derby coming up at home. We should win this one - but we've shown this season that no fixture is a sure thing - especially Derby. (The last place team in the league, who's only win (I think) came against us) All the NUFC supporters are AGAIN saying idiotic things like "If we don't score 6 goals, I'm considering this a loss" and they actually think this might happen. Fools. I'll be happy with another poor, awful to watch, long ball, ground out 1-0 victory. Because, let's be honest here, under Big Sam, that's all we're going to be seeing for a few years.

Check out this article, Time Magazine's top ten pieces of architecture of the year. I mostly agree with it. Here are photos that I gathered for those who don't have time to click the mouse.

#1
Bloch Building, Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art addition, Kansas City, Mo.
Steven Holl Architects

#2 Federal Building, San Francisco Morphosis

#3 Olympic Sculpture Park, Seattle Weiss/Manfredi

#4 IAC Headquarters, New York Frank Gehry Partners

#5 The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York Sanaa

#6 Olympic Stadium, Beijing

#7 CCTV Headquarters, Beijing

#8 Linked Hybrid, Beijing

#9 Heathrow Five, London

#10 Caja Madrid Tower, Madrid

Poppin' and Lockin', FOO!!

I've often told Mrs. Architectureandfootball, if there was any one thing that I wish that I could do that I have absolutely no chance at ever being able to do, it'd be this. Or of course, there's Elsewhere. I've always been amazed by poppin' and lockin'. And I always will be. I give these guys major respect.

On another quick tangent - I'd like to apologize for the lack of proper punctuation in all of the Japan posts. See, the apostrophe is Shift+2 on a Japanese keyboard and it just isn't efficient to reach up there when I'm flying along typing a post.


Today we've got the first major snowstorm of the 2007/2008 winter season here in Chicagoland and I, for one, am loving it. That has partly to do with the fact that I'm a fan of snow and partly to do with the fact that I work 2 blocks away from where I live so I don't have to drive in this mess. Fortunately.

So for anyone keeping score - in my last post I reported that the Urawa Reds won the J-League, but in a MASSIVE surprise in the last match of the season, the Reds LOST to the LAST PLACE TEAM and the then-second-place team won their match to catapult them to the top!! Now THAT is some excitement, people.

Tomorrow Newcastle has the good fortune to play their game in hand again Arsenal. We're in a TERRIBLE spell lately and while I've always counted our game in hand as a good thing, I've known that it's against Arsenal, so it really didn't count for anything more than another pointless game - MAYBE one point. Even though it's at SJP. So tomorrow we'll walk onto the pitch knowing that we've got a tough battle to A)get the press off of Big Sam's back, B)get the supporters off of EVERYBODY'S back, and C)at least TRY to start getting our season back on track. Fortunately, after this match we've got four (potentially) winnable games, but that really hasn't been worth a box full of hair for the first fourteen matches. I'm hoping Smith sits the bench (even though he was quite exciting last match. He can create a lot if he actually tries - but then completely chokes every time he's got a good scoring chance.) and Viduka gets the start along with Martins. They need another match together. Barton is slowly starting to show his stuff, and we need to capitalize on the guy before he goes to jail. So hopefully he'll start with Butt in the middle, with N'Zog and Milner on the wings. The Defense will be rubbish no matter what the lineup is, so I won't get into it. If anybody has Setanta Sports, watch the match tomorrow at around 3pm ET/2pm CST.

Last but not least - my beloved Illinois Fighting Illini are going to the Rose Bowl!! I don't want to hear about all the reasons we don't deserve to be there. I'm starting to actually SYMPATHIZE for what Ohio State had to go through while they were the undefeated #1 ranked team this season....until we beat them. HA! Oh - the Illini didn't play a tough enough schedule...Oh - the Illini have three losses....Oh - the Illini aren't in the SEC so they don't deserve ANYTHING.
HOGWASH!

We'll just let all the pundits whinge and moan and on January 1st we'll be showing them who deserves to be in the game. Remember the 2005/6 Rose Bowl when Reggie Bush was supposed to take USC on his back and win the thing all by himself but got run over by lowly Vince Young's Texas Longhorns instead? I do.

Finally, if anyone happens to read this before this weekend, there's another sporting event to take note of - an ENORMOUS boxing match between Floyd "Prettyboy" Mayweather and Manchester's own Ricky Hatton on Saturday. This is a huge match for a number of reasons, but A) it seems to be one match on a ladder which is attempting to make the sport of boxing relevant again B) Mayweather may very well be one of the best boxers in history - but Hatton's style will throw him completely out of his element, and C) neither of the opponents are from NBC's "The CONTENDER."

One is a pretty, quick-to-cover, defensive style boxer, and the other is brutally ugly but nice as pie, ball-out, sprint at your opponent at the bell offensive boxer. Either this will be enthralling or boring and frustrating. But it'll be something.